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The great thing about a pet scan is that they inject you with radioactive dye. This means that after the scan you can boast to all your friends that you’re a walking nuclear reactor. You’re not really, but they don’t know that.

 

Okay, now the boring bits.

 

Firstly, it’s easy, there’s no need to panic, and other than the injection (which I assume you’re used to by now), there is no pain whatsoever.

 

You will get a letter telling you about fasting before the appointment, and what you can eat the night before.

Pet Scan

When you arrive, they will show you into a cubical, and ask you to change into a hospital gown, then you get your radioactive injection, and then they leave you to rest for about 45 minutes to allow the injection to distribute around your body.

 

When you go for the scan, you will be asked to empty your bladder first, and then it’s onto the scanner.

 

The worst thing about it is boredom, but you can bring a CD with you, or they can play classical music. You must lie perfectly still for up to an hour, with your arms outstretched behind you. I always visualized myself skiing down a mountain, or having fun on a summer holiday, and I never had a problem. If you do, simply wiggle your toes so that the radiologist’s know that you need them, and they will stop the scan, and wait until you’re ready to start again.

 

I suppose the only problem is that your arms will go to sleep, and be very reluctant to come back to a normal position afterwards.

 

Pain rating on this one is 0/10 as there is none.

 

This letter was offered to me by Barbara, who is one of the technicians at the scanner, when I went for my Pet Scan on 9th July 2004. I thought that it would be nice to show what a 9 year olds understanding of such a powerful piece of machinery was.

 

Pet Scan by Madeline McCavana

 

The Pet Scan is a scan that sees inside you, like whenever you have pneumonia, it sees how bad it is.

You have to stay still on in or it won’t show on the computer.

The Pet Scan is a very useful thing.

There are only three in the UK.

The Royal Hospital has one.

It shows lots more that you wouldn’t know about.

The Pet Scan in the Royal Hospital started working on 13th June 2002.

It has been very, very, very useful since.

My mum and my mums friend works at the Pet Scan.

The Pet Scan is like going in a tunnel slowly and staying there for a while.

They say that they don’t know what they would do without the Pet Scan.

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